Page:Anderson--Isle of seven moons.djvu/21

Rh pace that finally slackened to a snail's, although she was sure she could hear the impatient "tamp, tamp, tamp," of an old man's cane on a porch, two turns to the right and three to the left up the hill.

She was shy, he inarticulate. But she did not resent his muteness, as she turned and measured him fondly.

No, six months hadn't changed him—just the same old Ben, hands fumbling at hips for pockets that never were there. But those broad powerful hands were very deft at furling sails and repairing winches. And those blue eyes which lighted his rather heavy features, even saving for them a sort of distinction, though they fell before hers, could hold a mutinous crew. Oh, "Captain Harve" had told her, called him "a man!"

Suddenly they both laughed—over nothing at all—but quite as suddenly hers trailed away.

"Tamp, tamp, tamp!" That cane was forever pricking the bubble of her happiness.

"Tamp, tamp, tamp, tamp!" It formed the heavy motif of her life, full time and double forty.

She slackened the pace still more, at the same time conversationally "going about," to get away as far as possible from that motif.

"You haven't told me the latest, Ben."

"Latest what?"

"Oh the most wonderful thing you saw on the voyage. You always tell me, you know."

"Well," he thought for a moment. "Oh, yes,—a vanishing island."